I don't know if it's appropriate to post a game that's not done yet, but there's a new 4X game under development, called Beyond Beyaan. It's more similar to Master of Orion 1 than any other games.

I'm the one who's developing it, I've been working on it for about a year and half now. Now, before you think "Oh, another MoO clone that will never get past galaxy generation", the game is way past that point. Ship designing, building, colonizing, system exploration, and planet management are all implemented. A new version is about to be released, after I've squashed the bugs I introduced with the ship design screen. Next up is the research screen

I've found some people who's very interested in publishing my game, they will provide professional artwork and sounds for my game, so expect to see it by end of year hopefully!

Best of luck! Are you looking for people to help out or are you just trying to get some public attention? In any case, you should head over to spacesector.com and contact the author of the site. I'm sure you can get a feature!

it´s like combining GalCiv with Sins with Supreme Commander
+ dynamic techtree
+ completely free shipdesign, you wanna build a deathstar as big as the sun`? no problem, if you have enough time and ressources ; )
+ a lot of action
and a lot more features...

- diplomacy and espionage is not as important as it should be
- indie-developer, started with 2 guys ( for me thats a plus, but for the most people not )

give it a chance, it´s not famous because of bad marketing and the name itself, i think.

They have released an alpha version, feature incomplete and bug ridden to paying customers who thought they would buy a full game. All they are doing at this point is fixing issues, that shouldn't be there in the first place. It will takes months till this game is anywhere near complete, playable and somewhat balanced, especially with the staff situation they are apparently in.

Beyond that, they straight out lied to people, trying to tell them that the first release was an accidental beta version(someone supposedly messed up the upload) and promised the real version. 10 hours later, they released the same version again, but with activated DLCs. To this day there has been no explanation to what actually happened. A couple of days later, the CEO took all the blame and suddenly all the fanboys were happy about this, but there was no apology for the betrayal, no explanation what actually happened.

There was talk in the developers forum, shortly before release, about cutting a feature(terrain), because it didn’t work as expected. The devs apologized for this and reasoned, that they would rather put out a functioning game than a flawed one. They got complete support for this decision from the curiously waiting community, understandably.
However, as it turns out, the game is far from functioning. It feels more like a framework, with many pieces there, but they don’t work quite together and can’t be accessed as they are supposed to be.

There are major issues with the UI and performance, frequent crashes, constant sound issues, missing parts(options, diplomacy, trade, terrain) and the main selling argument - combat - is not working as it's supposed to unless you try to micro manage every unit. There's not enough user feedback. Combat stances aren't even working. Furthermore there are game design problems - weapons testing is just eye candy and doesn't provide any useful information. Ship design is irritating and handled badly in a UI sense. The same is true for ship production and the tech tree. There's a forced 3 second delay when hitting the turn button. AI vs AI combats are auto simulated and the player has to watch a black screen for a minute whenever that happens(every turn in some cases). The game is distributed through steam, but multiplayer works using gamespy(wtf?). And the list goes on.

Did I mention the art direction? Ships look like they've been designed by 12 year old color blinds.

Trilarion wrote:Maybe you want to check out cosmic supremacy? It has some interesting features. Its a space strategy game. Its free (at least it says so). It has a lot of borrowed things from Civ (as far as I can see). And the interesting thing is that it is massively multiplayer (at least it says so). That combination with a turn based strategy game of game depth a la civilization is actually new to me.

Hi.. I'm one of the players who have tried Cosmic Supremacy, and I'm still a rather active member of their community (well, the game has been around 5 years or so now - I think - but I've only played it for a year, and hooked for a year) ..

Though I was wondering why Cosmic Supremacy seldom gets more attention (I think it does deserve it) - maybe it suffers the same situation like what Njordin mentioned with Star Ruler (first time I've been directed to that site myself) - it's developed mainly by one guy, and the marketing skills is also ermm.. questionable.. The game used to be called Space Civilisations, but I think due to it sounding like GalCiv (or some other thing that I wasn't aware about that happened before I knew of the game), it was renamed Cosmic Supremacy.

Anyway, I only skimmed through this forum thread, and noticed Cosmic Supremacy was mentioned at least twice though, but no one seemed to follow up on it.. I can testify that the game is free and ad-free (starting last year, the way the game is financed changed in that only a few players make an annual donation to keep it free - I'm one of the players who chip in, willingly too, and we only need to cover server costs anyway - the developer himself doesn't earn from the game.

About claims of massive multiplayer, while it's not 1000s of players in a game, but it is true that each game typically has at least 10-20 active players, sometimes even 30 or more players - some players sit out certain games, but every game I've played, I've met nearly different people with different playing styles (although some are familiar faces too), which I think makes the game that much more replayable.

It does draw inspiration from MOO and Civ (never played Civ myself before actually), but I find it is a totally different experience compared to other games. It's still a turn-based game, but requires the player to really make strategic moves and efficient use of his/her resources. There's a 3D map that makes things a bit more interesting for me personally, because you then have to decide whether to send your fleet against your neighbours, or whether you should just make peace with them, or even join forces with them. There's no AI, but like I mentioned earlier, you go up against real players that have varying styles of play. It's a bit like chess - finite number of possible moves, but no one game ever really the same.

I also like the fact that the game allows you to actually use simple programming kind of scripts to run your 'empire', so you don't have to do the micromanagement all the time, but you dont gain a direct advantage just by using these scripts over your opponents, nor can you buy with real cash for an advantage in-game.

There are a few drawbacks maybe, in that it does take a lot of time, and quite a bit of skill from a player to play a competitive game. Learning the game might be a daunting task, but it's not really that complex - actually I think it's slightly too simple in some aspects. There's also a need to download the client to play the game (it's only 7+MB anyway if I remember correctly), and there's really nothing dodgy about it - that was my first impression when I tried that game, but I've never regretted downloading it.

So ermm.. I think I got carried away writing about this, but I just wanted to do my part in spreading the word about the game.

p.s. I also just downloaded FreeOrion, and planning to give it a shot too..
..

I, and my friend (both Danish in nature and spirit, as in 'from Denmark'), have started developing a new MMO browser game, bringing together the different types of gameplay found in Civilization, SimCity, Transport Tycoon and other 4X-style games, but differ by being Massively-Multiplayer Online in one Persistent Universe, as well as having an insanely large Technology Tree.
Players are urged to specialize to create a premium product to trade with other players and are expected to create the services and products needed by other players.
Play casually or delve into micromanagement to get ahead. Be a political power or research your heart out. Build a company and sell it for profit later.

As with other browser games, micro-payments will be implemented, but having played other browser games and quickly hitting their limitations for free players, we decided not to have limits for free players. The free players will be able to experience everything that paying players do, albeit with more work to get the necessary cash to get to the "same point".
Micro-payments will ONLY give a player more in-game-cash. No "special coins to purchase special things" nor "instant production".
Just cash in the game. Nothing else.
Extra cash can help with production by paying workers extra to perform extra, or by hiring extra workers, or both. But there will be no "instant production". The only way to “instantly” get something, is to buy a finished product from another player, and even then, there will be a delivery time, depending on how far away he lives.

Another difference will be the ability to purchase technologies (and basically anything that another player has produced) from other players. If you have the cash, and someone is willing to sell, you can buy it.
WMD’s? Sure… get a stockpile and start selling… but remember… one of your buyers may just return one of your products… armed.

The game starts in the middle ages and continues to the space age, which itself will be layered based on technological advancements.
Spacefaring players will be able to visit, trade with and conquer non-spacefaring players, but conquering a people requires extra work to maintain a captured planet/area, as you'd need someone to watch over them, or they could rebel and gain freedom, or worse, hire some other stronger players to whoop your ass!

IMO, after the utter failure of sword of the stars 2, this is the most promising upcoming 4x game, beautifully presented as well.

...and 6 months later, SotS 2 will be feature complete (about 1 major update left there)... I would say the long-term success of the game is what the devs were going for, not release day success... so mission accomplished. SotS 2 is not fail.